The War of 1812 in the Chesapeake

Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Taylor, 2012 Frederick Douglass Visiting Fellow at the C.V Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, is writing a new book about war and freedom on the shores of the Chesapeake in 1812. The War of 1812 has often been called “America’s second revolution.” For thousands of enslaved African Americans around the Chesapeake – including many on the Eastern Shore of Maryland – it proved to be nothing less than a new birth of freedom as they sought liberty under the protection of British troops. Their long-forgotten story is the subject of Taylor’s work, following up on the success of his last book, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (Knopf, 2010), which was a finalist for last year’s George Washington Book Prize.